


Agency

by Cactaceae28



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Learning to love oneself, Molly Makes Everything Better, Self-Acceptance, Self-Esteem Issues, Sex Change, Supportive characters, Trans Female Character, Trans Julian Bashir, Transporter Malfunction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22938640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cactaceae28/pseuds/Cactaceae28
Summary: A transporter malfunction during an otherwise routine mission prompts Julian to consider the pain of the past, the trials surpassed and the friendships forged along the way.In the end, it leads to a shift in paradigm where she gets to set the course she wants going forward.
Relationships: Julian Bashir & Elim Garak, Julian Bashir & Jadzia Dax, Julian Bashir & Miles O'Brien
Comments: 9
Kudos: 82





	Agency

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WerewolvesAreReal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WerewolvesAreReal/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Identity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19781296) by [WerewolvesAreReal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WerewolvesAreReal/pseuds/WerewolvesAreReal). 



> “In social science, **agency** is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices."

"Would you like to try that on, Doctor?"

Julian turned from where she had been examining Garak's wares, just in time to catch the lieutenant that had been occupying the tailor's attention send a baffled look in her direction before remembering himself and hurrying away with an awkward mumble of what could generously have been called an apology.

Instead of answering, she turned back to the mannequin on display and trailed her fingers down the pleats of the knee-length skirt, absently noting the way the soft fabric fluttered with the action. There was something extremely soothing in that simple gesture and in the pocket of peace that existed inside the clothier's, all the more welcome following the upheaval among the senior staff at the latest events to hit the station.

"Maybe another time," she said reluctantly. "I'm due at the Infirmary in a few minutes."

Garak inclined his head in acknowledgment. "I take it you have been tasked with researching this incident?"

The incident in question had been precipitated by a ship recently emerged from the wormhole trailing an unknown substance behind. As both ship and crew had been in a rather rough shape, Julian, two of his nurses, Chief O'Brien and Worf (who had insisted on accompanying them on account of his previous experience with a hostage situation involving the Enterprise-D's Chief Engineer) had agreed to beam aboard immediately to assess the more urgent needs of the ship. On beam out, however, a sudden power surge in the transporters had resulted in the five crewmembers undergoing a change that resulted in materializing back as the opposite sex.

The reactions to that had been varied. Major Kira had taken one look at them and visibly struggled to contain her laughter, especially once the matter had become clear to the afflicted officers, though she had looked apologetic about her reaction once the initial shock had faded. Keiko, upon being informed of the situation, had taken to it with a greater degree of equanimity than her husband and only faint resignation. Jadzia, while understanding, had also been fairly vibrating with glee. Everybody else seemed various degrees of discomfited or confused by the situation.

Except, it seemed, for Garak. Julian smiled at the utter lack of judgment on the Cardassian's voice; the man was truly unflappable.

"Actually, there isn't much for me to do in that respect. This type of transporter malfunction is rare, but it has happened before. Apparently it even happened on the original Enterprise once, and their CMO was an exceptional record-keeper as well as a very good doctor. I simply need to confirm my data correlates with his, especially for the non-human crewmembers, but Bajoran and Klingon physiology is close enough to ours, so I'm not concerned. If we are all stable, it's really a matter for the Science and Engineering divisions."

She fidgeted in place and sighed, stepping away from the display. "I really ought to be going and giving them the all-clear soon, though, or Miles may not forgive me. Lunch later?"

"I look forward to it."

With a final nod she abandoned the shop and crossed the Promenade to the Infirmary; the relative bustle of visitors at this time in the morning meant that she was able to walk relatively unnoticed, and soon she was ensconced in her office and working on her report.

As expected, with the added advantage of previous peer-reviewed research she was able to give Miles a clean bill of health within the hour, and she had the other three crewmembers cleared well before noon. Barring any further unforeseen circumstances, their bodies were functioning normally and well within average parameters. She could reasonably conclude that there were no adverse health side effects, other than the officers' general discomfort at the situation.

On the other hand, as she had feared, the change had been effected at the genetic level. Which left only the examination she had been putting off since she realized it would be necessary. She stared at the empty screen for a few minutes, steeling herself for the unpleasant task ahead.

Finally, she retrieved the portable memory that contained the only copy of her true medical records and plugged it in. As heavily encrypted as it was, the existence of the datarod still made her feel terribly exposed. She didn't delude herself into believing that her efforts could stand against a determined hacker. She made sure that the door to her office was closed before she accessed the record of her altered genetic baseline.

She carefully combed through the data on display, examining each affected marker modified by the transporter and comparing it with the record she kept from before and the other samples she had already inspected. No apparent problems.

Then she opened a much older, barely-legal record kept on a different folder and compared the data against every strand of DNA, looking for the deviation that according to the post-First Contact geneticists could spell the beginning of either mental degradation or a descent into rampant narcissistic personality disorder.

There were absolutely no imperfections. Of course there weren't.

She carefully reset the protections on the datarod and secreted it away again, trying to put it out of her mind, as much as that was possible. When that was done, she quickly verified her work and forwarded it to the relevant parties.

Before she could stand and head out to the public part of the Infirmary, in fact barely a few seconds after the message was sent, her terminal pinged with a notification that it had been opened by the Science Officer, followed quickly by another notification from the Captain’s office. Just with that simple show of concern for their well-being, the knot in Julian’s stomach eased a little.

\- - - - -

Her regained peace of mind was disturbed when she came out of her office to be confronted with a minor crisis due to what looked like a widespread allergic reaction at Quark’s, complete with the bartender loudly proclaiming his innocence to the room at large and the constable hovering over her staff.

“I’m sorry Doctor,” Nurse Jabara said, in the middle of expertly managing the chaos in the room and sounding entirely unapologetic. “I felt that your work as the station’s Chief Medical Officer should be prioritized over a minor inconvenience,” she added sharply, glaring daggers at the noises of dissent from the less-ailed corner on the Infirmary, daring them to contradict her. Quark opened his mouth to complain, but one look at the Head nurse made him reconsider and he refrained from vocalizing it.

Julian stood there, noting that her staff seemed to have everything well in hand. As much as she felt pride in knowing that she could rely on them in situations like this without question, not having anything to do made her feel uncomfortably out of place. She was debating whether she should leave or try to find some minor task to take over when Odo left his post monitoring the dwindling activity (earning a gimlet eye from Jabara in the process) and approached her.

“How are you feeling, Doctor?” He asked awkwardly, looking as uncertain as she had been feeling. Julian, though surprised, was nonetheless touched by the stoic man’s effort, since this was a level of sociability that he usually eschewed.

“As well as can be expected. This has been a bit of a shock, but medically speaking, we are all in perfect health, so there’s nothing to worry about,” she reassured him quickly.

Odo looked at her in askance, crossing his arms in a way that seemed almost defensive. She waited for the man to say what was on his mind, feeling puzzled by his hesitation.

“If I may ask,” he started at last, with the tone of a person who thought they could be overstepping but not knowing why, “you seem to be accepting the situation better than Chief O’Brien and Commander Worf are.” He uncrossed his arms and continued, “I… don’t understand their distress. After all, neither of you is injured, or in pain.”

Julian held back from an immediate response, suddenly realizing why the constable, as a member of a shape-shifter race, would be confused. The problem was that she wasn’t sure how to explain that on this matter there weren’t easy answers.

“It is… complicated. For most solids, gender is an important part of how they define themselves.” She searched for an analogy and added, “it’s like… you consider the pursuit of justice part of who you are, right? But if suddenly the rules were flipped around and, say, you had to follow the Rules of Acquisition every minute of every day, you would be unhappy, wouldn’t you?”

She winced, realizing how that could also apply to Odo’s relationship with the Founders, but if the man noticed, he didn’t draw attention to her blunder.

“ For ‘most’ solids?” he asked instead.

She replied automatically, adopting the non-judgmental, neutral tone acquired over several years of medical school, “There’s no wrong way to be.”

She wondered if she dared to push a little, putting everything else aside as she considered the officer in front of her. She realized that she didn’t even know his age; Odo always looked to be in control, so she had never wondered what gaps there were in his understanding.

“I know you based your humanoid appearance on Dr. Mora. Have you ever wondered about maybe trying to mimic a female form?”

If the matter of lacking knowledge was all that had been holding the Changeling back, she could give Odo some information in basic anatomy, not only human but maybe Bajoran as well. Had his father figure bothered to explain anything at all? If not, it would be embarrassing but… actually, come to think of it, she should offer nonetheless. She didn’t know how helpful it would be, but she knew the inaccuracies of his humanoid form bothered him, especially the ears.

“I did experiment with adopting an outwardly feminine form shortly after leaving the scientists who found me,” Odo replied with disarming honesty. “Most humanoids reacted unpredictably and once I began living on Terok Nor I realized that it was significantly harder to assert my authority, especially with the glinns and guls. In the end, I decided that this form would be more conductive to my work.”

Julian frowned, feeling a potent surge of pity at the explanation. It was heartbreakingly easy to imagine that happening but it didn’t make it any less unfair.

“I don’t think it would be so bad if you tried now. You know, if you ever feel like it.” Odo looked taken aback, and she felt her cheeks heat with embarrassment. “Nevermind, forget I say anything,” she mumbled.

Odo peered at her and harrumphed, though there was no bite behind the sound.

Once the constable was assured that everything was under control and everyone would recover, he hauled Quark by the arm and left the Infirmary without a word, doubtlessly to deliver a scathing lecture in his office before letting the Ferengi go with a veiled warning. With nothing else to do and only a few minutes left until the end of her shift, she insisted on helping to clean up at least and Jabara, having made her point to the outsiders, acquiesced. When the Infirmary was put back to rights, it was finally time to break for the promised lunch date.

\- - - - -

Garak was locking the door to his shop by the time she caught up with him, and they walked leisurely to the Replimat, this being one of the rare occasions in which they didn’t have to rush on account of a coming deadline or medical emergency. On the way there, Julian wondered if there were more people looking their way than usual, of if it was just her imagination. Garak after all attracted stares everywhere he went, even years after becoming the only Cardassian living on the station.

That day, it was early enough that they could find an empty table without much trouble. Julian pushed her food around her plate, trying to banish her confusing, circling thoughts and the lingering unease of the morning. Fortunately, Garak was an exceptional partner in that endeavour, and the only one who, if all else failed, was perfectly able to annoy her into forgetting anyway. As such it wasn’t long before she was able to relax and fall into the familiar dynamics of their discussions.

“For once, it wasn’t completely dreadful,” Garak was saying with an air of magnanimity when she refocused on the conversation. “All in all I found it a rather amusing little story.”

“Oh, I can’t _believe_ you. _Flatland_ is not just a quaint little folktale. It’s social commentary! It’s a classic!”

“It was clever enough, if a tad simplistic. Also, you must agree that the metaphor was somewhat overplayed, surely.”

“Overplayed,” she enunciated, cramming all of her annoyance into the word. “Are you sure you want to go there? Because I’m just saying, that Preloc—” As she expected, Garak immediately bristled and cut her off.

“Preloc was a master beyond his time, and much unlike any of the human authors we have covered so far, even the ones who approached any degree of complexity or subtlety.”

“Of course, of course. And the eight-page comparison of the Klingon Empire to a blunted bath-leth in _Crimson Shadow_ was in no way _overplayed_ ,” she finished with a smirk.

Garak rolled his eyes at her, but played along, “That was a finely tuned and deeply relevant piece of evocative prose _and_ , since we’re on the topic, quite unlike your Zola’s obsession with food—”

“You liked _The Belly of Paris_ , don’t even try to convince me otherwise.”

“It certainly wasn’t as vapid as Shakespeare, mind you, but to even think it can compare to a true masterpiece such as _Meditations on a Crimson Shadow_ ,” he sighed dramatically. “Still, returning to our original discussion, I did appreciate the honesty of Mr. Abbott’s work. It is always refreshing to see an author rising over their cultural limitations to examine the less-savory aspects of their society—Is something wrong?” He cut himself off as she fairly gaped at him, shocked into silence at the sheer hypocrisy.

“Nothing. I’m just amazed you could say that with a straight face, is all.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m sure you don’t.”

That got Garak’s hackles back up, and as the debate progressed, Julian found that she was hungry after all. After a long conversation involving the protagonist’s many flaws (according to the tailor), the many layers of hidden meaning (because Julian wasn’t letting him get away with playing the fool) and exactly why being linear should correlate with homicidal rage (a topic raised but quickly dropped after realizing the implications), they were done.

With a contented sigh, she put the fork down. By common accord, they lapsed into a companionable silence, and she found herself letting her mind wander as she watched the people coming and going around them.

"That skirt... it isn't already sold, is it?"

Garak peered at her over the rim of his cup, and carefully set it down. "Alas, no. I received the wrong shipment of fabrics last month and exchanging that particular bolt would have been more trouble than it is worth. Tellarites make wonderful twill but are insufferable as suppliers. So for now it is simply… what was the term you used the other day? Window dressing."

“It is nice, though.”

“I must confess I’m uncertain as to whether I should take that as a compliment.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Julian said, faking indignation, though she had a good idea of the tailor’s game. This was payback.

“Nothing my dear, except that your sense of fashion has never been… quite on the same plane as most other people in the quadrant.”

“Have you ever been told that you are a regular comedian, Mr. Garak?”

“No, I’m afraid my previous occupation as gardener didn’t lend itself to such things,” The Cardassian didn’t miss a beat, guilelessly widening his eyes, and Julian snorted. Compared to when they met, even such a veiled reference was an open admission of trust on his part.

\- - - - -

Left with nothing pressing to do in the late afternoon, Julian’s steps eventually took her to the O’Brien family’s quarters with the idle thought of seeing if Miles was there, though she was fairly certain that darts were out of the question. She reached their door to faint sounds of a commotion inside. She strained her hearing, but it didn’t sound quite right to be an argument, so she rang the bell.

“Come in!” A frazzled voice sounded from inside. Julian hesitantly came inside, to the sight of a red-faced, curly-haired engineer being cowed by his daughter, who even in the new state of affairs barely reached his waist.

“Julian! Come on in, don’t just stand there,” He said, sounding torn between irritation and relief at her presence and generally looking at the end of his rope. She complied, watching the scene warily.

“What’s… going on here?”

“Eh, you see, I—”

“Daddy doesn’t want me to make her pretty!” Molly said indignantly. “I said I would do her hair like Mommy does mine, and Daddy said no!”

Miles flinched and rubbed at his forehead, muttering something that sounded like “Why is it always me?” Julian patted him in the back.

“Where’s Keiko?”

The Chief took his hand away from his face and grimaced, looking even more out-of-sorts and desperate than a moment before.

“There was some sort of emergency down in the arboretum, the volunteers who run it called begging for her help and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She promised to be back soon but…” The engineer gestured around helplessly.

Apparently having had enough of her father directing his attention at someone else when she was in the middle of working herself up into a proper snit, Molly's breath hitched in what was unmistakably a prelude to a loud temper tantrum. Julian found herself quickly interceding before the situation could spin further out of control.

"Actually, I came to ask for your help with _my_ hair, Molly. I'm afraid I don't know what to do with it. It's so unruly I might have to cut it all!" Julian said crouching down, but she didn't miss the sudden look of gratitude directed her way from the other adult in the room.

The girl looked at both adults with narrowed eyes, suspecting that something was going on but unwilling to call them out on it, especially when it looked like she would get her way after all. She swung her arms a couple of times and pursed her lips.

"Can I use Mommy's face paints too?" She hedged at last.

"If your parents say it's okay," Julian said hesitantly, looking at Miles, but his face, slightly more heart-shaped than usual, was quickly losing its deer-eyed look for something slyer. She glared over Molly's head and her father relented. More or less.

"Only if Mommy gets here in time and says it's fine honey, you know her make-up is not a toy."

Molly gave a put-upon sigh and finally acquiesced with a huff.

"Well, okay. You have prettier hair _anyway_ ," Molly told Julian, but she directed an annoyed look up at her father to express exactly how unimpressed she was with his reluctance. Miles coughed to hide a bout of relieved laughter while his daughter skipped towards her room, her bad mood seeming to have evaporated completely.

“Thanks for doing this, really,” he confided quietly before she came back. “She has taken to this like a champ, mostly, but it’s been… hard. On all of us. And something like that, it’s stupid to get worked up over it but…”

“It’s fine, don’t worry. What are friends for?”

Miles squared his shoulders to hide his embarrassment, wincing a little at the movement, and quickly shooed his friend to the living area.

"Well, you heard the lady,” he said loudly. “Let her sort out that rat's nest on top of your head and you'll be turning heads on the Promenade in no time," he said while she settled cross-legged on the carpet for lack of a better place. He almost sounded serious, but his eyes had drifted to the glittery pink case Molly was carrying to the coffee table. Julian glared again and considered sticking her tongue out at her best friend before deciding to be the better person.

"I'm sure Molly will do a great job. In fact, you'll probably be so jealous that you'll wish you could have an awesome make-over of your own when we're done."

Molly's eyes lit up with happiness before she was done talking. Oh dear, she had probably just ensured that the girl would go over the top in her efforts, hadn't she?

\- - - - -

Keiko got back an hour later and her expression of surprise made clear she had expected a greater deal of destruction in the living room. She greeted her husband with a peck on the cheek and smiled warmly at Julian, who waved from the floor and tried to hide her wincing.

“I see I didn’t have anything to worry about. Hello, Julian.”

“H-ouch-llo… Keiko-o-ow.”

Molly accepted her mother’s kiss and hug eagerly, but she was too focused on her mission to be distracted for long.

“Mommy, tell her she should brush more,” Molly demanded as soon as Keiko left her bags and settled on the sofa with them. “You always tell me that it hurts because it’s tangled because I haven’t brushed my hair.”

“Yes, yes I do. But you still need to be careful, sweetie. Do you want me to help you?” she said, and Julian caught her hands fluttering with the repressed urge to take over after another yank near the crown of her head. Miles, the traitor, chose that moment to angle the PADD he had been ‘reading from’ again as he had been doing periodically for the past forty minutes.

“No!”

Keiko sighed and reached down to briefly squeeze her shoulder. Unlike Miles, who had clearly washed his hands off his friend’s suffering, Keiko then did her best to coach their daughter into being a bit gentler and Julian could honestly have gotten up and kissed her for it.

Molly worked in silence for several minutes with the air of a general in the midst of an important decision. Julian peeked at the mirror in the corner and caught the girl looking up at her father and back at her quickly a few times before she seemed to make up her mind.

"If you are a girl now, you should have a girl name," Molly said with a touch of bossiness. "A good one like... Yurie. She's my favorite Evonia Master. Or Julia!"

"Molly honey, we've talked about this, remember?" Keiko said kindly, looking sidelong at her husband who looked back helplessly at her. "It isn't nice to call people names they don't like."

"But Julia isn't a nasty name! And Beral deserved it. She took my red crayon and didn't give it back."

"Molly..." Keiko said warningly.

The girl grumbled, but subsided without complaint. Then she got an impish expression and quickly burst in one breath, "May I call you doctor Julia, please?"

"Molly!"

"No, no, it's fine, I don't mind. I… like Julia, actually," She said, hoping the slightly strangled quality of her voice would be attributed to her determined hairdresser's antics as she pulled this way and that on the last unbound strands of hair.

"Are you sure? You don't have to agree just to humour her, you know that, right?" Miles asked, but she shrugged in response, unable to articulate any further.

"Julia, Julia, Julia!" Molly crowed above her head, keeping a wary eye on her mom but obviously delighted with her hard-earned victory over the adults' silly rules.

She felt the tension on her shoulders ebb just a little bit more in response.

\- - - - -

After Molly declared she was done, Keiko deftly avoided a catastrophe by declaring that her make-up was indeed off-limits but assured Molly that she could use it when she was older (prompting an annoyed sigh from the child) and remained firm under the force of her daughter’s pout. 

Unfortunately luck didn't hold for her after she decided to leave, not wanting to impose further on the family, and she had barely exited the immediate corridor outside the O'Brien's quarters when she ran into Jadzia and Worf, who had, evidently at the prompting of the later, taken a roundabout and mostly deserted route on their way back from the holo-suites where they regularly sparred. Worf gave her a curt nod and tried to brush past and go on his way, but Jadzia stopped cold, looking like a person who had just realized it was Christmas morning. Julian quickly figured that until the Trill had dragged her in front of a camera, escape would be impossible.

“We were going to my quarters for a drink. You should join us!” Came the predictable invitation. Worf scoffed, but had clearly realized the inevitability of the situation as soon as she had, so he nodded again to show his agreement. Soon they were in Jadzia’s quarters, and both officers put their weapons away while she hovered on the doorway.

"I read your report, Doctor. It is... good... to know that these bodies won't fail us while a solution is found," Worf said at last, uncharacteristically breaking the silence.

Somehow, the new slender, but still tall figure and the defined jawbone gave his female form the same august presence, just as demanding of respect as always. With the brightly-coloured hairclips still clinging to her hair, it made her feel even more woefully inadequate.

"I... yes, thank you, Commander," she replied, tugging at one of the tighter braids near her temple. Jadzia snorted, abandoning the jacket of her uniform over a chair in order to bat her hands away and promptly redid it, making sure it was looser and more even.

"Can you get us some drinks from the replicator? Two Tarkalean teas, one iced, one extra sweet, and a prune juice?” Jadzia said, pushing her to a low lovechair so she could work on the worst offenders.

“Anyway, _as I was telling Worf earlier_ ,” she continued pointedly, causing the Klingon to scoff softly from the other side of the room, “the method Starfleet has on record should get you back to normal without issue. There’s no need to panic."

“I was not panicking,” Worf grumbled under his breath, coming back with a small tray.

Jadzia ignored him under the pretense of picking up her glass. She took a sip and carefully returned to the strands of bound hair, twisting them gently while she talked. "I’ve already identified the contaminant on the ship, so once we have calculated the exact recalibrations, we will put you through the transporter again using the template of a successful beaming. It’s really very simple, so it shouldn't take long."

She directed a sardonic look at her sparring partner and continued, “We’ll have to do the procedure one person at a time in order to calibrate properly, so try not to be _too_ grumpy if you don’t get to go first. I promise you’ll get all of your handsome facial hair back intact.”

Worf didn’t deign to answer, but he got a wistful look in his eyes and ran a hand absently over his narrower, unblemished face.

When the lull in conversation made clear that the topic was closed, Julian cautiously ventured the question that had been rattling in her mind for a while. “I, well, if you don’t mind me asking, Commander… You actually met Ambassador Spock after she moved to Romulus, didn’t you? On the Enterprise?”

“I did not,” Worf answered succinctly. He must have seen her disappointment, because he added, “however, Captain Picard and Commander Data spent some time with the ambassador. Commander Data said she had ‘a truly exceptional mind’ and I believe the Captain still calls her a friend.”

“Oh.”

Julian didn’t know what she had been expecting and didn’t push further. During her brief introspection, she missed Jadzia’s suddenly sharp look in her direction.

The flow of conversation turned to lighter matters afterwards, though Jadzia bemoaned their absolute lack of interest at going with her to Quark’s and did indeed insist on taking pictures. Worf quickly took possession of the PADD in order to avoid having to join in this activity and after a few half-hearted complaints, Jadzia groaned melodramatically and acquiesced before filching a couple of the glittery butterfly hairpins and clipping them to her hair to pose as well.

Julian didn’t stay for long once Worf had left, just long enough to help Jadzia carry the glasses to the replicator. Before she could reach the door however, Jadzia suddenly turned to her and hugged her tightly for a few seconds.

"What was that for?" She asked, unable to keep the smile off her face.

"Just because."

\- - - - -

Later that night, in the solitude of her quarters, she took Kukalaka from his shelf and, in what was a far more habitual exercise that she knew to be healthy, thought of Jules. It was a habit that started during her late teens, though it had been losing some of its familiar painful edges in the last few years, ever since exasperation had gradually given way to first acceptance and then friendship in her relationship with the other senior officers.

“What do you think, old chum?” She said, staring at the affably crooked face of the teddy. She sat on the bed, tucked her legs below her, and forced herself to truly think about what she wanted.

Somehow in the aftermath of learning the truth of what her parents had done, when she had been fifteen and angry and had had no support other than Kukalaka, Jules had come to represent everything that made her feel good about herself. Jules had been good and kind and no matter what Richard said (maybe _because_ of what he said), the child that hadn’t measured up had never needed to be anything else.

As such, the ghost of the six-year-old had gradually become both a shackle and a refuge: the one, blameless part of their existence, the fragile part who held onto the hopes that Julian had never quite dared to contemplate for too long, the reason why the young cadet had sworn to pour everything into saving lives, into making a positive difference in the galaxy.

Still, with the perspective gained over another decade and with that inner spark of confidence that grew every time Miles boasted about a new holo-program they had to try or when Kira rolled her eyes with enough warmth to take the sting off the implied criticism, when Garak conceded a point in their debates and every time Dax sought her out at Quark’s over any other company, Julian was finally beginning to realize that that eulogy for Jules, the image carefully assembled from the thread-bare remnants of her memories from Before and alive only in the deepest recess of her mind, couldn’t be enough to carry her forward anymore.

Even before this happened, she had already started to wonder if maybe it was time to let Jules go. Not to forget, never to forget, but just to try and exist in a less painful frame of mind, even if it sounded almost unforgivably selfish. She hadn’t yet been strong enough to face the prospect.

Then, to compound the issue, this transporter accident had come about. Once again, she had been changed in a way that she hadn’t expected, but even so... This time it had been a random occurrence, not a judgment cast and carried out by others. She hadn't surrendered anything of who she was. She hadn't had to, because nothing fundamental had changed. Most of all, just this once it was a state of affairs that could be undone as easily as stepping into a modified transporter pad.

It was in that seemingly innocuous simplicity where the real beauty of the situation laid: It meant that this change also afforded her a choice. She could _choose_ whether she wanted to go through with it or not.

And that revelation, the power that came with that revelation… well, it almost felt like coming home, like surfacing from underwater and being able to breathe again.  


It felt like freedom.

\- - - - -

Thirty hours later, the modifications on the transporter were completed. Julia arrived at the room carrying one of the larger and more precise monitoring devices and set it in a corner, out of range from any sensitive equipment.

She kept a careful track on her readings as first Worf, then the Chief and finally her medical staff were returned to their previous form without incident. Though there were no anomalies, she stressed the necessity of a follow-up during the week, and while her staff would comply without fuss, she held little hope for either of the former two stepping into the Infirmary on their own accord. She made a mental note to ambush them in a few days and finally closed her tricorder, satisfied.

She inspected the empty transporter pad for a few seconds, took a deep breath and turned her back on it. Near the door, Miles did a funny little jerk with his shoulders but nodded evenly when their eyes met. Jadzia grinned encouragingly from where she stood at the transporter controls.

Captain Sisko looked at her steadily, assessing her conviction, and something in the way he stood softened almost imperceptibly. He asked once, matter-of-factly, “Doctor? Are you sure this is what you want?”

The answer came easily.

“Yes. I’m sure.”

And, together with her friends, Julia left the room.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Two quick notes to add before you go; first, as this is a somewhat sensitive topic, I want to apologize for any possible issues and errors on the story that may have cropped up; all I can say is that I've tried my best and I'll try to address them if need be.
> 
> Second, this was inspired by the wonderful TOS story 'Identity' and the author's comments at the end on transporter malfunction stories dealing with this topic. If you haven't checked WerewolvesAreReal's work, go do so, because it's absolutely amazing!


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